The rejection of the Massachusetts “buffer zone” law by the Supreme Court ought to reflect badly on somebody.

The state’s ballots are full of potential candidates for blame – individuals who had a hand in writing and defending that law. Democrat Warren Tolman, who is running for attorney general, sponsored the buffer zone bill in the state Senate. His opponent for the nomination, Maura Healey, helped push the law as a top deputy in the A.G.’s office. Her boss, Martha Coakley, is running for governor.

However she fares in this year’s elections, Coakley’s name will live on in the annals of law. In McCullen v. Coakley, the high court ruled – unanimously, which makes it an especially stinging condemnation – that the Massachusetts law violates the free speech rights of those who, for decades, have perched outside abortion clinics in Boston and Brookline, trying to convince women seeking abortions to reconsider.

Coakley, Tolman and Healey knew any new abortion-related law would face a court challenge.

Shouldn’t they have written a law that would survive?

Shouldn’t the attorney general have done a better job defending it?

Beyond the legal strategy, shouldn’t we expect these officials to be as zealous about protecting freedom of speech as they are about protecting the rights of women to walk undisturbed to the abortion clinic door?

Maybe, but don’t expect to hear regrets on the campaign trail, at least not about their performance.

It’s the justices who erred, Healey told me last week. She had left Coakley’s office to launch her own campaign when the case came up for argument, but she was in the audience and was struck that the justices didn’t seem to understand the context. She had prepared exhibits for the Legislature considering the buffer zone bill, including videos showing angry, in-your-face confrontations between protesters and clinic patients. One even showed a protester dressed as a police officer jumping into a patient’s car to press his case. Yet the conservative justices acted like the people outside the clinics were all gentle grandmothers like the plaintiff, Eleanor McCullen.

“They wouldn’t even call them protesters,” Healey said. “Chief Justice Roberts called them counselors” offering vital information to the patients, ignoring several huge differences between professional counselors and strangers offering unsolicited advice on the sidewalk.

Healey also said she sensed the justices didn’t have a clear idea of how close the 35-foot buffer zone really was – something the two justices who live in Massachusetts would understand if they had visited the clinics.

The court was unanimous in its ruling, but far from it in its reasoning. The four liberal justices joined Roberts, court-watchers say, to protect other rulings on clinic access from being overturned. Roberts’ opinion stresses that the state has other options to protect patients.

Page 2 of 2 - Coakley and Gov. Deval Patrick quickly announced they’ll pursue those options, promising the Legislature will have the chance as early as this week to strengthen laws against intimidation of clinic patients and blocking access to clinics.

Those actions will likely have the support of nearly all major-party candidates for statewide office. Only Mark Fisher, the tea party-supported candidate for the Republican nomination for governor, welcomed the Supreme Court’s ruling.

And only Evan Falchuk, an independent candidate for governor, mentioned a practical issue in his official response to the ruling. While supporting laws to protect clinic access, he called the buffer zone law “flawed,” and worried about the opportunity it gave the Roberts Court to overturn earlier gains.

Falchuk also mentioned the “facilities layout” of the clinics, which few politicians wish to discuss. We don’t see these sidewalk confrontations at Planned Parenthood facilities in Springfield, Worcester and other cities, for purely practical reasons. When the clinic controls its parking lot – or where it is housed along with other businesses in a building with multiple entrances – there’s no opportunity for protesters to get in patients’ faces. Ultimately, moving the clinics might be less trouble than fine-tuning the First Amendment through legislatures and courts.

But there’s a campaign going on, which is no place for practical suggestions or legal second-guessing, even when the candidates are vying to be the state’s top lawyer. While you might judge a lawyer by wins and losses, candidates would rather be judged by which battles they choose to fight, and whose side they fight on.

There’s little doubt that candidates in Massachusetts, with the possible exception of Fisher, stand with the women trying to go into those clinics, not the protesters on the sidewalk outside.